Formation | 1962 |
---|---|
Type | Non-governmental Organisation |
Registration no. | 64 002 806 233 |
Purpose | Protection of human rights |
Headquarters | Sydney, Australia |
National Director | Samantha Klintworth (2019– present) |
Chair | Mario Santos |
Gabe Kavanagh, Lisa Annese, Michael Dundon, Ajoy Ghosh, Saras Kumar, Cassandra Seery (2022) | |
Parent organization | Amnesty International |
Revenue | AUD $25,493,630 (2018) |
Expenses | AUD $27,412,042 (2018) |
Staff | Approx 60 (nationally)[ when? ] |
Website | www |
Amnesty International Australia is a section of the Amnesty International network, and is part of the global movement promoting and defending human rights and dignity.
Human rights in the Asia-Pacific region is a key concern for Amnesty International Australia. Amnesty International Australia searches out facts about human rights abuses and raises awareness of these abuses in Australia, the Asia-Pacific and around the world. The organisation undertakes advocacy and mobilises people to put pressure on governments and others to end rights violations.
Amnesty International Australia campaigns on international and domestic human rights issues. Past campaigns include calling for an end to the human rights abuses that drive and deepen poverty, through the "Demand Dignity" campaign; [1]
Craig Foster became the face of the "Game Over" (#GameOver) campaign in late 2019, which has been supported by high-profile sportspeople such as Liz Ellis, Benny Elias, Paul Roos, Ian Chappell, Lisa Sthalekar, Paul Wade, Frank Farina, Alex Tobin, Craig Moore; musician Jimmy Barnes, actors Bryan Brown and Anthony La Paglia musicians and many others, and continues as of 2022. [2] Sally McManus, and many others. The campaign centres on the plight of asylum seekers kept in indefinite detention by the Australian Government]], for many years after 2013 at detention centres on Manus Island, (PNG), and Nauru. [3] [4]
As of March 2022 [update] , campaign focus areas were Indigenous youth incarceration under the campaign name of "Community Is Everything"; fair treatment of refugees and asylum seekers; and gender and sexuality; women's rights; climate justice; anti-racism; taking action for individuals around the world who are in imminent danger; crisis response; calling for the end the death penalty around the world; and protection of health and human rights during the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia. [5]
The National Board of Amnesty International, which ensures that its constitution is upheld, comprises seven elected directors and up to two additional co-opted directors. [6] As of March 2022 [update] the board is headed by Mario Santos, with directors Gabe Kavanagh, Lisa Annese, Michael Dundon, Ajoy Ghosh, Saras Kumar, and Cassandra Seery. [7]
In 2018, the organisation introduced new structures and procedures for governance, which increased the impact of members by making more members eligible to vote at the AGM, as well as creating a forum in which members could participate and add their ideas. Membership is broken into seven regions, more or less based on the states and territories of Australia, with each region headed by Activism Leadership Committees. [6]
There are also local groups, with members drawn from universities or local suburbs. [8]
In 2019, National Director Claire Mallinson announced she was stepping down from her role in October after 12 years with the organisation. The Board appointed Samantha Klintworth as National Director, commencing in November 2019. [9] As of March 2022 [update] she remains in this position. [10]
The majority of funding comes from private individuals. The organisation is impartial and independent of any political ideologies, economic interests or religions, and as such does not accept any money from governments or political parties. The 2020 Council comprises a group of leaders in business, philanthropy and the arts to raise the profile of Amnesty in Australia, and help to raise funds. [6] The organisation reported over AUD $25M in revenue in 2018. [11]
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is a United Nations agency that provides services and advice concerning migration to governments and migrants, including internally displaced persons, refugees, and migrant workers.
Irene Zubaida Khan is a Bangladeshi lawyer appointed as of August 2020 to be the United Nations Special Rapporteur for freedom of expression and opinion, the first woman appointed to this mandate. She previously served as the seventh Secretary General of Amnesty International. In 2011, she was elected Director-General of the International Development Law Organization (IDLO) in Rome, an intergovernmental organization that works to promote the rule of law, and sustainable development. She was a consulting editor of The Daily Star in Bangladesh from 2010 to 2011.
The Bahrain Centre for Human Rights is a Bahraini non-profit non-governmental organisation which works to promote human rights in Bahrain, which was founded by a number of Bahraini activists in June 2002. The centre was given a dissolution order after its former president Abdulhadi Al Khawaja was arrested in September 2004 a day after criticizing the country's Prime Minister, Khalifah ibn Sulman Al Khalifah at a seminar in which he blamed the Prime Minister for the failure of widespread economic development for all citizens. The BCHR is still banned by the government, but has remained very active.
Colm O'Gorman is the executive director of Amnesty International Ireland. He is founder and former director of One in Four.
Amnesty International New Zealand is a part of the Amnesty International network, an international nonprofit organisation working to end human rights abuses. It is one of over 70 nationally organised sections or national offices of the global Amnesty movement.
According to human rights organisations, the government of the UAE violates a number of fundamental human rights. The UAE does not have democratically elected institutions and citizens do not have the right to change their government or to form political parties. Activists and academics who criticize the regime are detained and imprisoned, and their families are often harassed by the state security apparatus. There are reports of forced disappearances in the UAE, many foreign nationals and Emirati citizens have been abducted by the UAE government and illegally detained and tortured in undisclosed locations. In numerous instances, the UAE government has tortured people in custody , and has denied their citizens the right to a speedy trial and access to counsel during official investigations.
CCJO RenéCassin – more commonly known as René Cassin – is a charitable human rights NGO that works to promote and protect universal human rights, drawing on Jewish experiences and values. The organisation does this by campaigning for change in defined human rights areas through a combination of advocacy, policy analysis, public campaigning and education and building the capacity of activists and lawyers to promote and protect human rights. The organisation works in human rights areas that bear some relation to Jewish experience, such as discrimination, asylum, and genocide. The organisation holds special consultative status with the United Nations as a constituent organisation of the Consultative Council of Jewish Organisation (CCJO). The CCJO's first President was René Cassin, a principal drafter of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1968 in recognition of his work for human rights as a jurist, academic and statesman. The CCJO has been an active supporter of efforts to increase the effectiveness of the UN's human rights treaties and institutional mechanisms in the intervening decades. From the 1940s to the 1970s it was involved in the creation of the United Nations human rights instruments, which form the basis of the UN's human rights activities today.
Craig Andrew Foster AM, nicknamed Fozzy or Fozz, is an Australian retired soccer player, human rights activist and sports analyst for the Stan Sport streaming service in Australia. Foster played football professionally from 1988 to 2003, including for the national team, the Socceroos, from 1996 to 2000, and was chief football analyst for SBS from around 2002 until June 2020. He was the 419th Socceroo, and the 40th captain of the national team.
Amnesty International USA (AIUSA) is one of many country sections that make up Amnesty International worldwide.
There were widespread reports of systematic and escalating violations of human rights in Zimbabwe under the regime of Robert Mugabe and his party, ZANU-PF, between 1980 and 2017.
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says it has more than ten million members and supporters around the world. The stated mission of the organization is to campaign for "a world in which every person enjoys all of the human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights instruments."
Kumi Naidoo is a human rights and environmental activist.
Gita Sahgal is an Indian writer, journalist, film director, and women's rights and human rights activist, whose work focusses on the issues of feminism, fundamentalism, and racism.
The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC) is an asylum seeker support organisation in Australia. The ASRC, based in Footscray, a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, provides aid, justice and empowerment programs to over 1000 asylum seekers living in the community seeking refugee protection. The ASRC is run by a team of over 1000 volunteers and around 100 paid staff, and is headed by former university lecturer and lawyer Kon Karapanagiotidis.
Josephine Obiajulu Okei-Odumakin is a Nigerian women's rights activist. She is the president of the human rights groups, Women Arise for Change Initiative and the Campaign for Democracy.
Maryam Shafipour is an Iranian human rights activist. Following seven months of pre-trial detention in Evin Prison, including more than two months in solitary confinement, Shafipour was sentenced in March 2014 to seven years in prison for her political activities. Human rights organization have called for her release and condemned her conviction and prison sentence. She was released in July 2015.
Criticism of Amnesty International (AI) includes claims of selection bias, as well as ideology and foreign policy bias against either non-Western countries or Western-supported countries. Governments that have criticised AI include those of Israel, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, China, Vietnam, Russia, Chile and the United States, which have complained about Amnesty International for what they assert is one-sided reporting, or a failure to treat threats to security as a mitigating factor. The actions of these governments—and of other governments critical of Amnesty International—have been the subject of human rights concerns voiced by Amnesty. The Catholic Church has also criticized Amnesty for its stance on abortion, particularly in Catholic-majority countries. Amnesty International has also been criticized for paying some of its staff high salaries. A 2019 report also showed that a toxic work environment is present at Amnesty.
Amnesty International India was a country unit of the Amnesty International network, and was part of a global movement promoting and defending human rights and dignity. In September 2020, Amnesty halted its operations in the country after all bank accounts of the organization were frozen. The organization called this as 'witch hunting' while the government of India said the organisation's FCRA had been declined one after other for 20 years by different governments in power as per the law
Khadija Gbla is a feminist and human rights activist from Sierra Leone. She works as a cultural consultant, a keynote speaker and an anti-FGM campaigner.
Oksana Pokalchuk is a Ukrainian lawyer and human rights activist who has headed the Ukrainian section of Amnesty International since 2017.
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